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Biden & Foreign Policy

Biden is considered one of the leading experts on foreign policy within Washington circles, but his approach to the world — his views on the use of American power — is very much in keeping with that of the Democratic establishment. He is, in short, a “liberal hawk,” a more multilateralist version of John McCain who has consistently supported the use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as earlier “interventions” in Kosovo and Bosnia. He’s called for U.S. troops to act, unilaterally if need be, in Sudan.

He not only supported the invasion of Iraq, but he did so with gusto, providing bipartisan political cover for what is probably the worst foreign-policy disaster in American history. As the scholar Steven Zunes pointed out, “one of Obama’s strongest distinctions from McCain was his wisdom and courage in opposing the invasion of Iraq. By choosing Biden, however, who was as big a backer of the war as the Republican nominee, Obama is now saying that this doesn’t really matter, thereby negating one of his biggest advantages. Biden’s ‘experience’ is that of a militarist whose contempt for international law has been apparent in hard-line positions on Iraq and other critical foreign policy issues.”

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Biden is also a dedicated Drug Warrior, who has long supported the disastrous policy known as “source country interdiction” — essentially militarizing friendly governments’ assaults on poor farmers — and has consistently opposed medical marijuana. In 2007, he said that while he opposed federal raids on medical marijuana facilities in states in which they’re legal, “there’s got to be a better answer [to pain management] than marijuana. There’s got to be a better answer than that.”